


i'd give you the sun if you asked me for it

by orfaeus (hazy_daisy)



Category: Wanderlust (RP)
Genre: Angst, Mourning, Other, Ouch, did i spell jericho's name right? at this point it's my best guess, flower-related angst, valentine cries for 5700 words straight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:14:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazy_daisy/pseuds/orfaeus
Summary: Faelyn's gone. Too soon. Too soon.i.e.; valentine takes a conversation that they had with mars about faelyn dying and makes it Bigger and also a little bit Worse
Relationships: Faelyn Erinnes/Jericho La Follette
Comments: 7
Kudos: 2





	i'd give you the sun if you asked me for it

**Author's Note:**

> ahaha can we get an Ouch in the chat
> 
> if this doesn't make Mars Specifically cry i've failed in my mission. i cried a lot writing this. maybe it was the music i had on in the background.
> 
> speaking of. mood listening: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2WMGXvoTXM49NardVy_NSefEAhyVvHA
> 
> putting a spin on (x) by egg, specifically;  
> \- hey there delilah  
> \- pumped up kicks  
> \- ride  
> \- prom queen  
> \- riptide  
> \- listen before i go

Everything feels _wrong._ All the plants are still there. They’re drooping, now, but they’re still green, and the flowers are still yellow and red and purple and blue, and they still reach desperately for the sunlight as if they won’t die like the person that loved them for so many years.

-

It’s been two days, now. Jericho’s still moving. He’s still functional ( _he isn’t, he’s barely alive, everything is numb_ ). He can’t think about it. He can’t. It’s been two days. Nobody’s watered the flowers.

-

He wakes up alone on the third day and it _hits_ him. 

He collapses into a chair in the living room and everything feels _heavy_. He’s alone, in their house, surrounded by Faelyn’s plants, and they’re going to die soon, but he can’t—he can’t bring himself to get up. To do it.

There’s a gentle touch at his shoulder. His heart races and he thinks, _Faelyn_ , and he whirls around and—

There’s nothing there. He must have imagined it.

-

Their absence is palpable. He does his best to ignore the empty spaces, to keep moving, for a couple of weeks—functions on muscle memory and a mental checklist before collapsing into bed every night. He hasn’t watered the plants. They’re drooping.

He has this—this strange feeling, all the time, now—their absence is palpable, except when it’s _not_ , and—

He ignores it. He can’t ( _he can’t, he can’t, he can’t_ ) think about that. He can’t. Not now.

-

He can’t call it cleaning. That’s not what he’s doing. He’s tearing apart what’s left. Everything has to _go_ , he can’t live here, not like this, where everything is _Faelyn’s_ , he sees them in everything, and he has to get rid of it, trash it burn it throw it out, but he can’t—god, he can’t touch the flowers. He tries, he holds a delicate pot in his hands, and wants _so badly_ to be able to put it outside, to be able to smash it on the ground, to get the memories _out_ of his head, to be able to move on, to be able to live again, and he’s _done this all before, so many times before, why can’t he ever_ —

He puts the flower, red and wilting now, back onto the windowsill. Faelyn had liked that color. The deep, intense red, the one they’d called vermillion even if that wasn’t quite accurate, the one they’d called ‘romantic’ and said they’d write a song about ( _and they’d been coughing up blood, at the last, and seeing that color makes Jericho feel sick and twists his heart violently in his chest_ ).

A voice in his head says he should water it. It doesn’t sound like Faelyn. It sounds like something in his heart, sad and sentimental, trying to preserve the things that Faelyn loved. He can’t water it. He can’t water the rest of them, either. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

He tears apart the rest of their little home, throws away the sheets that still smell like them, the pillows that still carry the scent of their hair, and stops, when he comes to Faelyn’s guitar. He can’t touch that. He can’t. He leaves it in the corner where Faelyn had kept it.

There’s a yellow flower that lives on his desk. Faelyn had put it there, and hadn’t said why—hadn’t said that it was their favorite flower, their favorite color, hadn’t said that they thought it would be nice for Jericho to have something bright on his desk, hadn’t said that this was another thing that they loved that they wanted to share with him. Seeing it is staggering. He’d thought he’d moved it, earlier, taken it off his desk and hidden it somewhere ( _where it could die out of sight_ ). He must not have. He reaches out to move it again, but where is he supposed to put it? On the sill, next to the flower that had been another of Faelyn’s favorites ( _the one that looks like blood_ )?

The yellow flower stays on his desk. He can’t bring himself to water it.

-

They were young, when they died, even for Jericho’s standards. They were young, and bright, and they practically glowed when they smiled. 

Jericho’s heart breaks for the loss of them. It breaks for the loss of the two of them, together. It breaks for the loss of what could have been. It breaks for the loss of what Faelyn could have been. 

He thinks, sometimes, when he’s almost asleep, that he can feel the bed dip, as if Faelyn is sitting there next to him, where they used to perch before they got into bed, where they sat to run their fingers through his hair and sing him lullabies. He’s never quite sure if he dreamed it or not.

-

He’s laying in bed, half-awake, exhausted, too tired to stand and too tired to sleep, when he hears the faint sound of Faelyn’s guitar in the other room. It’s light, as if someone had trailed their fingers across the strings, and it’s out of tune.

Unnerved, he gets unsteadily out of bed. By the time he gets there, the sound has stopped.

The same sentimental voice tells him to tune the guitar. Tells him _for Faelyn’s sake_ , tells him _it’s right there. You can do it._

He sits heavily on the floor, holds their guitar over crossed legs, the way Faelyn used to. He tunes it the way that they showed him, because Faelyn always loved to share the things they loved with him, because Faelyn had said _at least I can show you how_.

He runs a finger hesitantly over the strings, when he’s finished. It sounds… familiar. Right.

He feels sick to his stomach. He puts the guitar back and goes to collapse back into bed.

-

Faelyn wrote a lot of songs. They wrote a lot of songs for _him_. Jericho’s forgetting them, now, against his will; and it’s as hard to mourn the loss of the memories (the melodies, the sound of their singing, the smile on their face when they had something new to show him) as it is to try and forget them so he can have some peace.

He dreams about them. More than he’d like. Sometimes they’re pleasant; more often than not, they’re nightmares, where he watches them die over and over and over and can’t do anything. He watches them grow frail, and tired, and tries to ease their pain, and they cough up blood onto the sheets, and in life they were still smiling—as much as Jericho tried to keep them comfortable, peaceful, they tried to keep him happy, and they were always smiling, and Jericho thinks sometimes that they only ever cried for his sake. For knowing that they were going to have to leave him behind.

They don’t smile, in his nightmares. Sometimes, they scream, and the sound haunts his waking hours.

He hears their music, sometimes, in his dreams. He’ll wake with the last notes of one of their love songs echoing in his head. He thinks he’s dreaming, that night, when he wakes to pitch-black and the sound of the guitar. It’s the plucked-out melody of Faelyn’s favorite song, the one that they were so happy with when they’d finished it, the one they always liked to play for Jericho. He thinks he’s still dreaming, thinks that this is one of the good ones, half-expects to see Faelyn, smiling and vibrant and _alive_ , when he gets up and stumbles into the other room. 

The weight of his body registers when he reaches the door, when he looks out into more of the same pitch-black from the bedroom, and he knows he’s not dreaming. The knowledge settles into his heart like a pile of bricks, and he’s not sure how to process the fact that the strings of the guitar are still vibrating with the last echoes of the melody.

-

He’s not sure exactly what he remembers, in the morning. Not sure whether it was all a dream after all, whether he’s going crazy, whether those feelings he’s been having...

Jericho keeps the guitar tuned. Just in case.

-

The white roses outside are turning colors. The bush in the center turns yellow—Faelyn’s favorite color, after green, and their preferred choice of color in flowers. The bushes surrounding it are in different shades that Jericho can’t identify a reason for. 

It takes a few days for him to realize that these are the colors that _he_ likes—at the very least, the ones that he’d told Faelyn that he likes. The ones that are echoed across the house in flowers that are dying or dead now because Faelyn had said _this is your house, too, Jeo._

-

He closes the curtains. It’s easier to exist in the dark. Faelyn had always kept them open, but Faelyn was a child of sunshine, Faelyn liked to picnic on nice days, Faelyn insisted that a home should be full of light, Faelyn had always thought that it would be good for Jericho to have his desk by a window.

He closes them, on a bad day, and when he comes back to that room, they’re open again. It’s too blatant a change to be ignored. It’s too blatant a message to be ignored.

-

“Are you here with me?” he asks, one day, barely louder than a whisper. It’s a ridiculous thought—or, it should be, but Jericho’s seen too much in his life to write anything off that quickly. 

The window eases open, and a breeze pushes its way inside. Jericho thinks, for a moment, that he can hear laughter on the breeze, light and wild.

-

(Jericho’s fallen asleep at his desk again. He’s working harder than he ever used to, and it’s so obviously a coping mechanism, but it’s not a good one.

Faelyn sighs, at his shoulder. He’s so sad, nowadays. They don’t know what to do. They would try harder, make their presence more obvious, but can they stand to break Jericho’s heart again? The way he’d looked, those first few days, when they’d touched him, when they’d tried to offer comfort; it was obvious that knowing that they were there was only going to hurt him. Only going to make it harder for him to move on. 

Faelyn can’t help themselves, sometimes, and they put the flower back on his desk, and they play their guitar, and they open windows because god knows Jericho’s not getting enough sunshine, but it’s an unhealthy habit. Better that he learns to survive on his own, even if Faelyn’s helping him on his way.

He should go to bed. He’s not going to be comfortable, sleeping there. They reach out, tentatively, to put a hand on his shoulder. If they’re soft enough, he’ll think he’s still dreaming, still asleep, and he’ll remember their words when he registers reality. “Jericho,” they call, softly, and they keep their touch as gentle as they can when they touch his shoulder. “Jericho, my love. You should go to bed.”

Jericho jolts awake, whirling around, and Faelyn pulls their hand back as if they’ve been burned. Jericho’s hand goes to his shoulder, where Faelyn’s hand was, and his eyes search the darkness, unfocused and unseeing.

When he calls, “ _Faelyn_ ,” sleepy and desperate and _heartbroken_ , Faelyn’s hand goes to their mouth and they struggle to hold back a sob.

They stay quiet, stay still, and Jeo settles down again. Faelyn watches him glance around, realizing where he is. He casts one last glance around the room, and they stay as still as they can, as if they’ll be any less visible than they are when they’re moving. 

Jericho makes his way to bed. Faelyn’s whole chest aches with the urge to sit next to him, to hold his hand, to hold him. They sit by his bedside until he’s asleep again.)

-

He _had_ to have heard something. He can’t be going mad. He can’t. He can’t. 

His heart says _Faelyn’s still here_ , and his mind wants it to be true just as desperately as it wants it to be false. God, he wants Faelyn back, but what would that mean, if they were still there? Half-alive, clinging to something, unable to move on?

If they are there… they’re trapped by their own memory just as much as Jericho is.

The yellow flower on his desk is long dead. Jericho forgets to water it, even on days when he can bring himself to water the plants. He was never good with living things, the way that Faelyn was. 

“They’d be upset with me, wouldn’t they?” he asks the flower, absent-minded, trying not to think about what it would say about his sanity if he were actually talking to a dead plant. 

“ _No_ ,” he hears, from behind him, and the voice is startlingly familiar, rent by emotion. “Never,” he hears, as he turns around, and god, the determination in Faelyn’s voice is unmistakable, even now.

There’s nobody there, there never is, but Jericho knows what he heard. His heart is racing, and his lungs feel shallow, and he _knew it_.

-

He tears his library apart. There has to be something. There has to be. There has to be. Faelyn’s not the only one—can’t be the only one. He has to see them again.

His library is a mess, now, and there’s books strewn over the floor and he’s torn more than one page out of them in _frustration_. He’s long since collapsed to his knees, frantically skimming the pages on the floor.

_He finds something_ . God, thank god, he finds something, and it’s something that’ll work, and this is something he can _do_ , and all the spell needs is for Faelyn to agree to show themself. Simple. Simple. It’ll work, it has to—

“Please,” he’s saying, “Please, I know you’re here, I just want—I want to see you again, _please_ , I need to see you again—” and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until a sob cuts him off. He can barely see, through the tears, but he focuses on a spot by a bookshelf, vision watery and determined. There’s nobody there. But—

Faelyn; they’re there, they have to be, they have to be, they have to be, but they don’t want to show themselves. They don’t want to be seen. A sob shakes Jericho’s body. “ _Please_ ,” he says, one last desperate cry. He’s met with silence.

-

(Faelyn, pressed up against a bookshelf, tries not to cry. Fails. Their arms are wrapped around themself, in some desperate attempt to hold themself together, and they have a hand pressed to their mouth to muffle the sound of their crying. 

It takes _everything_ that they have not to go to Jericho, where he is on the floor, sobbing in a pile of spellbooks and literature. _It’ll only hurt him_ , they think, _it’ll only hurt him_ , _it’ll only hurt him,_ and they repeat it like a mantra in their head but _god_ , all they want is to comfort him.

Faelyn always liked to give to Jericho, when they could. They don’t think he ever knew, really, that they’d do anything they could for him, if he’d just asked. It hurts, like a hot iron through their chest, not to do what he asks, but Jericho would never be able to move on if he saw concrete proof that they were there. The sound of their voice can be forgotten. They don’t know if their physical appearance will ever allow Jericho to rest.

The least that they can do is let Jericho rest. Faelyn knows why they’re here, still, and it’s not going to do either of them any favors to torment Jericho with their presence.)

-

The plants die. The flowers. The succulents. Jericho moves; the new house is sparse, but he can’t bring himself to describe it as empty.

Faelyn’s there. He knows they are. In some capacity, at least. He doesn’t see signs of them as often, anymore, but he can feel their presence, when he concentrates. Jericho comes to the conclusion that for whatever reason, they don’t want him to know that they’re there. If that’s the case, they’re not doing a very good job of it. Roses bloom outside the front door. Jericho has nothing to do with the yellow blossoms. When he sees them, he doesn’t know whether to smile or to cry. 

He takes their guitar with him. He leaves it open, out of the case, like Faelyn had kept it when they were alive. He doesn’t hear music in the night, anymore. Just silence. He thinks he can feel Faelyn next to him, sometimes, but when he reaches out in the darkness, he only feels cold sheets and empty space.

-

He calls for them, on bad days. In his sleep. Over the pages of a spellbook that would let him _see_ them, let him hold them again. He pleads, screams, cries.

He never gets an answer.

-

He finds a spell that will let a spirit pass on, with the help of a magician. He talks about it, out loud, to the air, to the void. Faelyn won’t talk to him, when he wants to see them, but the offer of help, allowing them to leave, doesn’t get him any response either.

-

(Years pass. Faelyn stays with Jericho longer than they’d thought they would stay with him, even before they’d known they were going to die so soon. 

They stay absolutely silent. They can’t afford to keep hurting him like they’d hurt him at first. They have to at least allow him the chance to think that they’ve moved on, even if they know somewhere deep down that he’ll never believe it. Jericho will look at them, sometimes, seeing and unseeing all at once, and Faelyn will be reminded once again that Jericho is a magician. He knows. But they can’t—god, they just can’t.

They allow themself little things. Flowers outside his house. New ones when he moves. Faelyn doesn’t know if Jericho was aware that they noticed, when he changed the weather for their sake, when he brought the sun out from behind the clouds for them. Faelyn can do the same, now, if they really concentrate. They try to bring Jericho sunny skies whenever they can. They don’t know if he notices. 

They hope not (but at the same, time, god, they hope that he does, they hope that he knows that they love him, that they care about him. By far the hardest thing that Faelyn’s ever had to do is stay so silent and separate from Jericho, even as they stay by his side).

Jericho… heals. Bit by bit. That’s what Faelyn wants to think, at least. He falls in love again. Faelyn isn’t jealous. They were never that type, and they’ve found themself somewhat… single-minded, as the years go by. They’re happy to see him happy. Or closer to happy, at least. If he were—well. They would know, wouldn’t they?

There’s one person—Faelyn’s always been a good judge of character, or at least they always thought they were, and they don’t trust them. Jericho, dearly as they may love him, can almost see ghosts but is blind when it comes to this person. He falls in love. They can see it. They can see that this person doesn’t deserve it.

Faelyn’s more single-minded, these days. They haven’t been _angry_ in years, and the feeling is unfamiliar and hot in their chest, and they barely register their motions or the snarl on their face before they look down and realize that they’ve shoved the Bad One into their roses, the ones that they fight to keep alive outside of Jeo’s home.

Elyon emerges with cuts from the thorns on their arms, and Faelyn can’t bring themself to feel bad at all.

Elyon splits with Jericho, eventually. Faelyn’s heart breaks when they think _maybe everyone does, eventually_. 

Jericho changes, with time. Faelyn can see the trajectory. There’s a bitterness to him that wasn’t there, before; a harshness, a cynical nature. The hot poker iron feeling twists in Faelyn’s heart, every time they see him snap, see him glare. They know what it’s motivated by. The hurt and the loss and the pain. They think they’re losing him, some days.

They can still see him, though. Under it all. The man that they love. Loved. Love.

It’s been years. Faelyn is forgetting the songs they used to love. It’s getting harder not to throw open the windows on sunny days in hope that something, _anything_ , will make Jericho smile. Make him happy.)

-

Jericho wakes up in the middle of the night. He’s never really stopped doing that. For a moment, he reaches out, almost on instinct, to the side of the bed. The space is empty. It always is, on nights like this.

He feels someone in the room with him, and he lets his eyes focus on empty space where he knows Faelyn must be. They’ve been… distant, lately, even for a spirit that refuses to talk to him. _Maybe they’re drifting_ . He thinks, fleetingly, _it’s been years now, so maybe—_

“Come over and sit,” he says to the figure that he knows is in the corner, voice sleep-rough but resolute. A few moments pass, and he thrills when the bed dips next to him, under the weight of an invisible figure. He leans forward to kiss them, sleepy still, following old memories that he keeps close to his heart and the routines from years ago.

(Faelyn’s been more single-minded lately. They can’t resist it, when he looks right at them, when he asks them to just come and sit. What else could they do?

They’ve already done enough, already revealed themself, but they jerk away when Jericho leans in to kiss them, as if they’ll be burned by his touch. Faelyn hasn’t let themselves _touch_ Jericho in years. It’d be too obvious. Too painful. Jericho kisses empty air.)

“I’ve kept you here for too long, my heart,” Jericho says, as gently as possible. His hands worry at the sheets, a nervous tic. “I know you’ve been staying for me, but you deserve to rest. I’ll miss you, but I think I can finally let go now.”

There’s no response.

“Faelyn,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s said their name in years, and he tries and fails to keep the crack out of his voice when he finally says it. “I want you to know that I love you. But I want you to rest.”

Slowly, in the dark, in the last fragments of the midnight hour, Faelyn flickers into view, faint but still there. Jericho’s heart tightens at the sight of their face, after all this time. They’re pale. It’s not the way he remembered them. Not the way he wanted to remember them. They look like they were at the end; pale, thin. Like they might devolve into a coughing fit, if they try to sit up too fast. Fragile. Fractured. 

Their voice breaks when they say, “I _can’t_ ,” but the fact that they’ve finally shown themselves to Jericho means they’ve stopped with the charade. It means they know what has to happen. Their bottom lip trembles the way it always did, when they were trying not to cry, and it’s easier than anything for Jericho to open his arms to them.

They’re light, when he guides them to lie on his lap. He doesn’t know whether it’s because they’re a ghost, or because they were _so_ sick before. They’re pliant, tonight, almost resigned, and they’re not all there, but they press into his touch. With their head on his legs, they curl the rest of their body onto the bed, vaguely curled around Jericho. Once he gets them to lie down, he thinks, he can do what needs to be done. He has to do it. He fights to keep himself somewhat detached, but it’s easier, now, than it would have been years ago.

He and Faelyn have spent years together, now. Their presence doesn’t hurt like it used to. The wound isn’t so fresh, anymore. 

Before he resorts to an exorcism, he has to ask. He still has the spell that would let them move on, if they would allow themself to, and he thinks they might go along with it this time. He keeps it memorized like he keeps Faelyn’s guitar tuned in the other room. But—maybe if he knows what they want, he can help them achieve what they’ve been looking for all this time, help them pass on without the help of magic.

He keeps his voice gentle when he asks, “Why are you still here?” He cards his fingers through their hair, the way that he used to when they would lie in his lap, when they were looking for attention or affection or just contact. The way he used to when they would sit out in the meadow and have picnics, when Faelyn wanted to lay in the sun, wanted to be close to Jericho.

Faelyn turns, looking up at him, and reaches a hand up, pressing a palm to his cheek. There’s no warmth to their touch, but there’s a tenderness to it that makes Jericho’s heart spin. “I just wanted you to be happy,” they mutter, tone dreamy and tinged with melancholy.

Jericho’s hand freezes in their hair, and for all his certainty a moment before, he suddenly feels lost.

(Jericho tries to offer excuses, and all Faelyn can do is watch him, sadly, and smile like they always have in situations like this. As much for his sake as for their own. He forgets that they’ve been there this whole time, that they’ve seen him, that they _know_ him, that they can tell when he’s not happy, beyond the fact that they physically can’t move on when he’s sad.)

Jericho’s thoughts race, his cheek pressed up against Faelyn’s hand. Has he really not been truly happy all this time? “I am happy,” he tries to say. “I’ve been happy, at least—”

Faelyn is smiling, still, in his lap, the way that they smiled at the very end. It’s a smile, but it’s sad, tinged with the same melancholy as their voice. It’s their hopeful expression when they know there is no hope. It’s a fond expression, he thinks, but he still knows Faelyn well, and they wear their heart on their sleeve—and their heart, out in the open, is aching and broken. They run a thumb over his cheekbone. “You can’t lie to me, Jeo.”

There’s silence before Jericho can finally bring himself to say, “You have to go, Faelyn.”

“I don’t want to,” they say, tears brimming in their eyes as they look up at him, still fighting to keep up their smile. “I don’t want to go,” they say, and their voice breaks and so does their smile and they break down into tears.

They bury their face in his shirt, and Jericho smooths their hair, holds them as they cry. When the sobbing has subsided, they look up at him again, and the heartbreak, the pain, is clear in their eyes. Jericho doesn’t think he’s ever seen them so distressed before. Not even when they’d been about to die. “I don’t want to leave you on your own,” they say, voice cracking and thick with tears. “Not like this.”

Jericho struggles to keep his own tears at bay. “You have to,” he says, gentle but firm. 

He thinks his conjecture was probably right; Faelyn’s been slipping, lately, drifting. 

“But you’re not happy, Jeo.” Faelyn sniffs and draws themself up, pulls themself up to sit fully in Jericho’s lap, to cup his face in their hands.

“That’s alright, Fae,” Jericho mutters, and it’s not true, but he’s lived like this for long enough already.

“You deserve to be happy, my love,” they say, firmer this time, and Jericho sees more of the Faelyn that he remembers. Someone more solid than the spirit who’s been following him for months now. Their brows press together in something that’s either concern or distress or some mix of the two. “And I can’t always be there to open the window—” they start to say, but their voice breaks, and they start to cry again, leaning more of their weight against Jericho.

“I know,” Jericho mutters, putting a hand over one of theirs, leaning his face into their palm. “I know.”

“I’d give you the sun if you asked me for it, you know,” Faelyn says, tone desperate and tear-choked, eyes searching Jericho’s face for something.

“I know,” he assures them. “I know, Phi. I know.”

“I’ve said it a thousand times, but I really, _really_ do love you, Jericho,” they say, increasingly desperate, and Jericho whispers reassurances as panic creeps into their expression. 

“I know,” he says, finally, and they quiet. “I know, Faelyn.” 

A few moments of silence pass between them. Silence has always been comfortable between them. 

“I know a spell,” he says, quietly, carefully. “One that can let you move on.”

Faelyn moves one of their hands from Jericho’s face, the one that he’s not covering with his own hand, and attempts to wipe the tears from their face with the heel of their hand. “I know, love. You told me, remember?” They smile again, melancholy and heartbroken and trying regardless.

“Yeah,” Jericho breathes. “Right.” He takes a breath, reaches out his own free hand to wipe tears from their cheek. He’s still not sure how long this will last, them being here, substantial, if translucent. “We can do it now, if you’ll let me.”

Faelyn looks apprehensive, and Jericho knows them better than to think they’re scared to die again. They’re not scared for their own sake. They weren’t the first time around, either. 

“I’ll be alright,” he says, doing his best to smile, for Faelyn’s sake, this time. “I promise.”

Faelyn sighs, and gives him a teary smile. “You don’t need to lie to me, Jeo.”

His smile drops, and he does his best not to look taken aback. It’s been a while since he’s talked to Faelyn. “It’s better for you,” he finally says. “I don’t want to keep you here, between worlds, stuck following me for however many hundreds of years I have left.” He pauses, considering, and chances his next statement. “It’s not going to make me happier, knowing that you’re stuck like this.”

Faelyn’s smile falls, as well. “I know,” they whisper. “I think I always hoped—” a shaky break cuts them off. “Hoped I could help, not just hurt you, again and again, all that time.”

“I know,” Jericho whispers back.

Faelyn examines his expression again, looking for something, and then the determination in their own expression softens. “Alright,” they whisper, with a sense of finality about it, and then, bringing their face closer to Jericho’s, a last, “I love you.” They press forward to kiss him, one last time, as if they’re trying to fit everything they never said in the past years into one gesture.

“You deserve to be happy,” they say, one last time, when they’ve pulled back, hand still pressed to Jericho’s face. There are tears running freely down their cheeks.

Jericho pulls up his best smile again. “I love you,” he says, one final time, and Faelyn bites their lip as if they’re going to try not to sob.

(Faelyn is afraid. So afraid. Afraid to leave Jericho, because how could they leave him alone, leave him with nobody, leave him with his pain and hurt and nothing else?)

Jericho holds out his arms and Faelyn falls into them willingly, fits themself up against Jericho’s chest like they’d done all those years before. They tuck their face into the crook of Jericho’s shoulder, and he holds them as they sob, and he starts to whisper the words of the spell. The one he knows by heart.

Faelyn fades gradually. The sound of their quiet sobs, their movement, then their body in Jericho’s arms. It’s too soon, before it’s all over. Too soon. Jericho is left with tear stains on his shirt, and the weight on his heart, the one he’d only managed to lift slightly all these years, falls down again.

Jericho hasn’t really been alone in so long. Faelyn hadn’t been _there_ , but they’d been present. He’d always had some inkling that they hadn’t left. Now—the emptiness is real. It’s pervasive. Jericho feels so hollow.

It hurts like they’ve died again. It’s harder, this time, he thinks, but he can’t bring himself to think any more about it. There’s nothing to do. It’s so late, and it’s so dark, and the voice in his head says _a church would be safe, would be somewhere you can mourn_ , despite the fact that Jericho doesn’t believe in God anymore. He’s lived through many deaths. He’s loved enough people to have grieved their loss; he’s done this all before, so many times before, but _still_ , it aches, deep in his heart. Faelyn had never really left. They’d stayed, for so long, and now to lose them again, for the first time, for the last time—

Jericho lays back in his bed, and looks up at the ceiling. All he can bring himself to do is breathe; push the air out of his lungs and fill them again. He counts his breaths. He falls asleep. He doesn’t dream.

(Outside, the roses begin to wilt.)

-

_\+ (Faelyn opens their eyes again, and is surprised to find that their body doesn’t ache. It’s been a while since their lungs have done anything but wheeze; since their body has done anything but feel weighted, fatigued._

_It takes a moment for their memories to flood back. For their mind to catch up with the rest of their body._

_Something’s different. Not… wrong, necessarily, but there’s no reason for them to be cured. There’s no reason for them to have woken up downstairs, in their favorite chair. They’ve done it before, fallen asleep with their legs thrown over the side of the chair, but Jericho usually carries them to bed—and they haven’t left their bed in a little while, now._

_Their hands are still pale, when they look down at them. That’s the same. The house—all the curtains are closed. That’s odd._

_They make their way to their bedroom, and Jericho is there, and Faelyn’s impulse to call out to him is immediately curbed by the fact that he’s crying. Alone, in the dark._

_Well. Not alone. There’s a body in the bed._

_Oh.)_

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me about this or i'll cry some more


End file.
